On Judge John Hodgman, he hears disputes from real people all over the world via Skype and tells them who's right and who's wrong. Jesse Thorn is the bailiff. The two cases you’ll be hearing are slightly truncated versions. If you want to hear the full versions and see the supporting evidence, click below.

Chris wants his daughter, Sophie to get over her shyness and show more confidence in uncomfortable social situations. Sophie believes in making progress in her own way and doesn’t need any pushing from her dad. Eugene Mirman made a special appearance on this case to help weigh in on the dispute.

Nancy brings the case against her friend Becky. They are both veterinarians. Nancy lives out in the country, and owns a herd of Shetland ponies. She says the ponies act as ponies do and are perfectly fine just as they are. Becky says Nancy’s ponies are ill-mannered. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Only one man can decide.

If you liked what you heard today, there are over 180 episodes of Judge John Hodgman ready and waiting for you, and a new one added each week! Click here to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, in the RSS feed, or look for it in your favorite podcatcher. Here are a couple of our listener recommended episodes:

For a time, Sergio Mendes was the most famous Brazilian musician in the world. He grew up learning classical piano, heard Dave Brubeck's "Take 5" and took a turn towards a jazzier sound. His band Brasil '66 was at the forefront of a bossa nova explosion that introduced the genre to listeners across the world.

Throughout his career, Mendes has collaborated with many artists, including saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley and Janelle Monae. But he also once collaborated with Harrison Ford… in an unexpected way. He'll explain.

Mendes will talk about how his music has evolved over the years, why his encounters with other musicians have been so important, and why the sensual, romantic sound of bossa nova has such universal appeal.

Sergio Mendes' new album is called Magic. To find out where he's going next on his tour, check out his website.

Abstract. Experimental. Weird. Funny. Those are all good words to describe Brent Weinbach. But none of them come close to summing up how special he is. Or the faces he made during this set. You'll just to have to imagine those.

He performed for us at the most recent MaxFunCon -- as part of a comedy showcase in the woods. We present part of his set here to you.

Tickets for MaxFunCon 2015 go on sale November 28th. You can find more of Brent Weinbach's upcoming shows on his website.

James Fearnley plays accordion for the English folk/punk band The Pogues. The band formed in the early 1980s, and made a name for themselves with a Celtic-inspired sound.

Fearnley will talk about his time with the Pogues, how they finally decided that frontman Shane MacGowan had gone off the rails, and whether as an Englishman, Fearnley feels secure in the band's Irish heritage.

Elvis Mitchell is film critic, best known as the host of KCRW’s "The Treatment". Since 1996 he’s interviewed scores of film industry writers, actors and directors on the show. He’s even gone into filmmaking for himself, producing a series of documentaries about race and success called The Black List.

But don’t mistake Mitchell’s tastes for being conventional. He may very well be the only critic in America quoted as enjoying the film Pootie Tang.

He’ll talk about the interplay between television and film, how he got his start in pop culture and why he was arrested on the Canadian border with Cuban cigars and $15 thousand in cash.

Bob Edwards was around at the very, very beginning of NPR. He was the original host of Morning Edition back in 1979 and stuck with public radio for decades. His interviews and insight earned him the Peabody award in 1999 and cemented him as a broadcasting icon.

In 2004 Edwards was controversially removed from his hosting job. Listeners didn’t take kindly to it, but Edwards was quick to move on- to satellite radio. For almost a decade The Bob Edwards Show aired daily on Sirius XM. And a weekend version of the award-winning program was aired on public radio stations via Public Radio International.

Production of The Bob Edwards Show ended in September. To celebrate Edwards’ 40-year career, Jesse will play his 2005 conversation with him. Edwards will talk about his early days at NPR and why he stuck with non-commercial radio for so long.

Reruns of The Bob Edwards Show can still be heard on Sirius XM and on iTunes.

Ever feel nostalgia for a time or place that you never even experienced firsthand? That’s what Jesse felt after watching Ric Burns’ documentary Coney Island, a beautiful portrait of America caught somewhere between its past and its future.

This week's episode was recorded live on stage in the Masonic Lodge at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Our thanks to them for hosting us. Additional thanks to NPR's Generation Listen for sponsoring the event.

Dan Harmon created the NBC sitcom Community. It’s a show about seven misfits at a community college trying to get their lives together as they deal with their new friendships. The show’s offbeat humor and characters earned it a devoted following and helped Harmon rise to fame.
Harmon was fired from Community after its third season, but it wasn’t long before he was able to find a new job… as the showrunner for Community.

In the year that Community went on without him, he took his podcast on the road. Documentarian Neil Berkley produced a movie about the tour and Harmon’s impact on others. It’s called Harmontown.

Harmon will talk about his mindset going into the sixth season of Community, what he likes and dislikes about traditional sitcoms and why he will never again share a personal voicemail from Chevy Chase with a public audience.

You can catch the documentary Harmontown in select theaters and available on demand now.

Rob Corddry has been a correspondent for The Daily Showand starred in a bunch of different movies, but more recently his face -- covered in clown make-up -- has been a fixture of Los Angeles billboards and bus stops. It’s because he created and stars in adult swim’s Children’s Hospital. It’s probably the silliest show to have ever won an Emmy.

Corddry also plays a doctor in the webseries Wedlock. In it, he attempts to help a couple played by Mark Duplass and Jennifer Lafleur who are desperate to start a romantic relationship, but have none of the chemistry necessary to make it happen.

Corddry will talk about growing up as the oldest sibling, what he worked out in therapy, and what it’s like being on-set with Michael Bay.

Andy Kindler was the second comedian that joined us live on stage in the Masonic Lodge at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. He’s had two specials on Comedy Central and has an annual State of the Industry Address at Montreal’s Just For Laughs, festival.

You can catch Kindler as the voice of Mort in the animated series Bob’s Burgers and as a fictionalized version of himself in the IFC series Maron.

Singer and fiddler Sara Watkins has been busy in the bluegrass scene since she founded Nickel Creek with her brother Sean and mandolinist Chris Thile in 1989. She's released five studio albums as part of the band. In 2009, she began her own solo project and has released two albums.

Watkins joined us to perform the single "You and Me" from her 2012 album Sun Midnight Sun. Her band included Sean Watkins on guitar, Don Heffington on drums and Benmont Tench on piano.
Sara and Sean have a monthly podcast called Watkins Family Hour in which they banter and play music with fellow bluegrass musicians. You can download it on iTunes.

DJ Quik is one of the most prolific figures in West Coast hip hop. He's a great rapper, but first and foremost, he's always considered himself a producer. He's produced some of the most inventive samples and beats of the genre. And even though he geeks out about latest and greatest studio equipment, he's always used whatever it takes to capture the sound he wants -- even if it means recording a music sample with a VCR.

Quik first made a name for himself in the hip hop scene in the late 80's and early 90's, handing out homemade mix tapes and deejaying around Los Angeles. He's since released ten albums, and produced records for everyone from Tupac, Snoop Dogg and Xzibit to Tony! Toni! Toné!.

He'll talk about why a leaked record and a couple of guns made him realize he needed a new circle of friends, why he never wants to stop making pretty beats for his records and his inspiration for his awesome, awesome hairstyles over the years.

Have you ever picked up and actually flipped through one of those in-flight catalogs? Well, the sketch comedy group Kasper Hauser takes all of the grotesque and excessive product offerings of Skymall, and brings them to another level in Skymaul 2: Where America Buys His Stuff.

Merrill Garbus is the creative force behind the musical project tUnE-yArDs. The group’s first album, BiRd-BrAiNs, was released in 2009 and if it sounds lo-fi, it's because it is. Garbus recorded the album almost entirely on handheld voice-recorder. All those music loops? She created them by copying and pasting the sound files over and over on her computer.

tUnE-yArDs released a new album earlier this year. It’s called Nikki Nack. It still features the band's signature mix of drum loops, samples and ukulele, but it’s a much smoother-sounding production than their debut.

Garbus talks to us about why she was drawn to the ukulele as a hormonal teenager, how she fell into producing Bay area hip hop, and how to weave political and social issues into music without getting preachy.

Artists are always influenced by the work of others. And sometimes, something that an artist sees is so good, so perfect that they wish they had made it themselves.

This happens so often to the people we talk to, that we made a segment about it. It’s called I Wish I’d Made That.

Josh Dorman is a fine artist from New York. He specializes in invented landscapes, created in a mixture of collage, drawing and painting. His images play around with the ideas of time and space to create an unusual reality.

Dorman was a sophomore in college when he discovered Paul Klee and his painting Landscape With Yellow Birds. And it really affected him -- maybe too much? He'll explain.

If you’re in New York, you can see Josh Dorman’s solo exhibition, Whorled, at the Ryan Lee Gallery, through October 11.

You probably know John Darnielle as lead member (and sometimes only member) of the band The Mountain Goats. His music is known for its poignant lyrics and simple instrumentation. Darnielle started the band in 1991 and has since released 14 albums.

Now, he’s written his first novel, which is long-listed for the National Book Award for Fiction.

Wolf In White Van is the story of Sean, a young man who has survived a suicide attempt, but is horribly disfigured in the process. Sean goes on to create a mail-order role-playing game, only to find out how his imagination can have real-world consequences.

Darnielle talks to Jesse about why lyrics are so important to him, subliminal messaging, and how much artistic responsibility we should assign to writers, musicians, and other creative people.

In 2012, the stand up comic Tig Notaro had a famously bad year. She caught pneumonia, which snowballed into C. Diff. She and her girlfriend broke up. Her mother passed away unexpectedly. And then, she learned she had breast cancer.

You're probably familiar with what came next. Notaro headed out to a stand up gig in Los Angeles, at the Largo. But she didn't feel right performing her usual set. She decided to open up like she had never before. Hours after she received the diagnosis, she went on stage and said to the audience, "Hello, I have cancer."

She took the audience through the pain she had experienced over the last few months. It was still in her deadpan style, with jokes and stories that were brave and sometimes uncomfortably funny.

Notaro is in remission now, and she's continued to perform stand up, write and record her podcast Professor Blastoff. She's headed off on a new national stand up tour, called Boyish Girl Interrupted.

She talks with Jesse about how she decided to approach that set at the Largo, why cancer and tragedy made her more open to the world, and telling her "bee joke" after an emotionally intense set.

Ed Helms is an A-list comedy star these days. He starred in the mega-successful Hangover trilogy, and on NBC's The Office for seven seasons. And before that, he caught a break as a correspondent on The Daily Show, where his cohort included Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert.

But like most folks in show business, he started out low on the totem pole -- working as a barker for comedy clubs, handing out fliers to people walking by, begging them to come inside.

Helms talks to Jesse about his very early career, how Stephen Colbert helped him both professionally and personally, why he thinks The Hangover doesn’t deserve its reputation as a "bro movie", and why of all things, he started a bluegrass festival.

Helms is currently shooting the new National Lampoon's Vacation movie, in which he stars as Rusty Griswold. If you live in Los Angeles, you can find him hosting the 2014 LA Bluegrass Situation on October 10th and 11th.

Anna Faris made her name doing broad comedy in the blockbuster Scary Movie series in the early aughts. The series was hugely commercially successful, but wasn't well liked by critics. Faris says she learned a specific skill -- how to portray a one-dimensional character.

Her comic and dramatic performances since then have been anything but one-note. Faris went on to produce and star in The House Bunny and appear everything from rom-coms like What's Your Number? and Just Friends, to dramas Lost in Translation and Brokeback Mountain. She's also got a taste for darker comedic work, as we've seen in Observe and Report and her CBS sitcom, Mom.

On Mom, Faris plays a recovering alcoholic and single mom who's taken in her own mother, played by Allison Janney. The show begins its second season on September 29.

She'll talk to Jesse about the conventions of comedic roles for women, having fun with the grotesque in Observe and Report, and what it was like to go to her 20th high school reunion (as a movie star, married to movie star Chris Pratt).

FOUND Magazine Point Guard Davy Rothbart is back to share more pieces of found ephemera; this time a ransom note, an application to join a secret society, and a collection of very unfortunate teacher course evaluations from one of the nation’s most respected universities.

Otis Brown III has spent his entire life surrounded by musical talent. His father was a jazz band instructor who played with James Brown and Al Green. His mother was a choir director in addition to being a classically trained pianist.

His godfather was the famous soul and funk drummer Bernard Purdie, though Brown didn’t quite realize the significance of that until later. He was classmates with innovative musicians like Bilal and Robert Glasper. And though Brown pictured himself teaching music in the classroom, rather than gigging around town, the jazz icon Donald Byrd convinced him to try his hand at being a professional musician.

Brown found his calling as a drummer, and has performed and recorded with a number of jazz greats, from Herbie Hancock to Esperanza Spalding. Now he's released his debut album, The Thought of You, on Blue Note/Revive Records.

He talks to us about his career thus far, using the drum as a diverse storytelling tool and why he considers himself a closeted Shania Twain fan.

Maria Bamford's comedy is weird and wonderfully distinctive. For example: she recorded her last stand up special at home, in her living room. The seating? Her couch. The audience? Her parents. She performed her set with breaks "off-stage" to take cookies out of the oven and administer medicine to her pet pug. Her comedy takes on a number of difficult issues, ones that are personal to her -- mental illness, suicidal thoughts, or tough family dynamics (she describes her family's favorite pastime as "Joy Whack-a-Mole"). But she doesn't use humor as a shield. She uses it to confront an issue, point-blank.

Bamford talks to us about why she chose to perform a special in front of her parents, processing awful experiences or feelings into jokes, and why she describes herself as "the orchid of comedy".

The Special Special Special is available now and streaming on Netflix. Her new Comedy Central CD / DVD special, Ask Me About My New God is now available.

Dan Deacon is a Baltimore-based composer and electronics musician who has released over a dozen albums since 2003. He talks about why a player piano composition by Conlon Nancarrow changed his life and the way he made music.

George Saunders could have been a geophysicist. In fact, he was one. He graduated from the Colorado School of Mines and worked in the oil fields of Sumatra. He came to fiction writing a little later in life, attending Syracuse University's creative writing program (where he now teaches).

Saunders is now well-recognized as one of the greatest short story writers and satirists of our time. He's been awarded a MacArthur "Genius" grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship, along with piles of literary accolades for his collections, which include Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. His stories often explore a world much like our own, just slightly more grotesque -- societies that are terrifying and recognizable. His writing is incisive, sad, and also really funny. His collection, Tenth of December, is available now in paperback.

Saunders talks to us about how people interpret luck and what they do with it, drawing inspiration from a disturbing dream, and unyielding financial pressure (the kind that doesn't even lift when you win a major award).

Todd Glass is a veteran stand up comic. He's been performing comedy for thirty years. Two years ago, he made a big change. He had created a life for himself. He was a well-respected and well-liked comedian. But he was living in large part as a closeted gay man. He worried about who knew, and who didn't. At forty seven years old, he made the decision to come out, and finally live on his own terms.

Glass tells us why he waited so long to "bust out of the shed", the elaborate coping mechanisms and fake outs he constructed to hide his learning disabilities growing up, and why he thinks so much comedy doesn't stand the test of time.

Artists -- the people that make stuff -- are always influenced by the work of others. And sometimes, something an artist sees is so good, so perfect that they wish they had made it themselves.
This happens so often to the people we talk to, that we made a segment about it. It’s called I Wish I’d Made That. This week, we talk to cartoonist and author Ariel Schrag.

Ariel Schrag was already writing and drawing comics as a freshman in high school. Each summer, she'd create and self-publish a comic about the previous school year. The subject matter was, well, high school stuff. She wrote about her high school crushes, family issues, her struggles in AP Chemistry. Then she caught the attention of an indie comics publisher who decided to release her work as a series of graphic novels. She was only in the eleventh grade.

Now she's written a new coming of age novel, Adam. The title character is an awkward teenager who spends a summer visiting his older sister in New York City. He develops a crush on a girl. The problem is, this girl likes girls. To get around that problem, Adam convinces her that he's a trans man. The book is sweet, funny and frank.

For our segment, Schrag tells us about a very different kind of coming of age novel, Bennett Madison's September Girls, and how it's inspired her to infuse some magic and otherworldliness into her own work.

If you were a parent or a child after about 1975, you probably know Raffi. He's one of the best known children's performers in the world, and his original works like "Baby Beluga" and "Bananaphone" and renditions of folk songs like "Down By the Bay" have helped him sustain a career for almost forty years.

Now he's released his first new album in over a decade, called Love Bug.

Raffi Cavoukian talks to us about his early childhood in Egypt, his social activism, and why he's dedicated his life to entertaining children.